


Hysteria

by sidnihoudini



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-22
Updated: 2007-02-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/646070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>10 more completely unrelated prompts.</p><p>“Quiet,” Pete’s whispering, bent down low beside Patrick’s single-sized bed. “You want us to get caught?”</p><p>Patrick, startled out of sleep, pushes himself up on one elbow. “What’s going on?”</p><p>“I got my cousin’s car.” Pete is making quick work of Patrick’s blankets. “We’re leaving.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hysteria

_01\. god doesn’t want us back now, baby._

“Run, run, run!” 

Patrick glances up just as Pete tears around the corner, his jacket tails flying after him, hood falling down the back of his head. A panic-stricken face: adrenaline rush. 

“What the fuck,” He grumbles, quickly unscrewing the hack device from the side of the window security panel. At about the same time that Pete hurries past him, he slides the little appliance into the back pocket of his jeans, and takes off, following.

.

“What the fuck did you do?” He snaps, turning around in the front car seat to face the line of cops trailing behind them: sirens blaring, guns ready to blaze.

Pete’s at the wheel, which in hindsight Patrick kind of regrets letting happen, but what’s done is done.

“The fucker saw me!” Pete exclaims, jerking his hand against the steering wheel. “I couldn’t do shit before he was on me -- I think he broke my rib.”

Unfazed, Patrick twists back around, and crosses his arms over his chest. “If he broke your rib I don’t think you could run like that.”

“You underestimate me,” Pete counters, like they’re some alpha couple discussing weekend plans over a morning round of tea. The car jerks to the side and rumbles when Pete hits a sidewalk and whatever is (was) on it. 

Patrick glares across the tight space of the front seat. “I’m sorry, you’re right, you _are_ the hero in this scenario. In fact, why, I don’t think those are really cop sirens that I hear at all, and -- “

“Alright!” Pete shakes his head and gestures to Patrick’s legs with one hand. “Would you shut the fuck up for once, and defend my fucking honor?”

“Fuck you,” Patrick mutters, bending over to root around under the seat for the gun, loaded and ready to go. Still under his breath, he adds, “Your _honor._ Yeah _right.”_

Chewing the side of his thumb, Pete pulls into oncoming traffic just as Patrick straightens up, gun in hand.

 

.

 

_02\. you're all following protocol._

“You need the A-slips,” He drones, tapping against the edge of Patrick’s cubicle with a thin stack of manila folders. “Because _I_ have a report to write before tomorrow morning, and I can’t _do_ that without them.”

Patrick glances up from his keyboard, fingers poised over ASD and J. He flunked out of keying class in high school, but fuck that bitch Mrs. Hogan. He took one of those online tests last month and got 90 wpm.

“I’ll have them,” He manages, pushing up his glasses. The Boss doesn’t look completely pleased, but isn’t militant enough to continue. He nods at Patrick, taps the cubicle wall again, and walks away.

A few minutes spent clicking away at his mouse (expertly avoiding any kind of slip altogether by watching muted videos on YouTube) sends Patrick into some kind of work related catatonic state. At least until:

“Dude!” Pete’s in the two foot wide opening to Patrick’s cubicle. “Powder blue, _nice_!”

Patrick glances down at his work ensemble: the same suit he wore to his grandmother’s funeral when he was fifteen. So he hasn’t grown that much, whatever.

“Yeah it’s...” He trails off and adjusts his glasses again. Pete leans against the short cubicle wall and Patrick’s entire workspace shifts. “It’s okay, I guess.”

Smirking, Pete nods and runs a hand up the back of his hair. “Hey, has Ashton been on your ass about those slips too? Because I totally forgot to do them, and, well, I can’t _find_ the originals, really, so...”

“They keep a copy of everything in the records department.” Patrick fiddles around with the bottom hem of his dress shirt, he shifts minutely and the entire chair squeals like he just stepped on a cartoon mouse.

Pete looks mildly interested. “I didn’t even know we had a records department. Wow.”

As he wanders away from Patrick’s cubicle, entirely consumed by this newfound knowledge, Patrick finds a mild fascination with a click-release ballpoint pen.

Too bad it’s only Tuesday.

 

.

 

_03\. She’s a Killer Queen: gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with laser beam, guaranteed to blow your mind anytime._

Patrick closes the front hood of the car and wipes his hands, greasy with car oil, against the front of his overalls. Pete’s hanging out the side window like a dog, mouth wide open but in a grin. 

He glances over Pete’s attire, and comments, “Those are totally ridiculous.”

“They’re the best things in my life right now. So watch your mouth,” Pete warns, reaching down to the car ignition, fumbling a little as he tries to keep his stink-eye pointed in Patrick’s direction.

Patrick smirks and waits for the engine to start. 

“You’re totally the worst mechanic I’ve ever met,” Pete continues, twisting the key around in the ignition, listening to the car sputter and grind until finally something clicks and it doesn’t sound quite so bad anymore.

Stepping over oil puddles and dips in the pavement, Patrick comes up close to the window. “I’m the only mechanic you have. And that’s just because I don’t make you pay for shit.”

“And I love you for it, darling,” Pete grins, revving the engine not so carefully. Patrick goes to say something like ‘maybe that’s why it died on the side of the highway, retard,’ but then Pete’s kissing him and ducking back down inside the car and pulling out of the parking lot like it’s nothing. And maybe that’s all it is.

Patrick stands there with his dirty clothes and a stripe of oil smudged down the collar of his shirt, watching hopelessly as Pete grins over the dashboard and waves with four wiggling fingers.

“See ya,” Patrick murmurs to nobody in particular, watching the car peel down the nearest side street.

 

.

 

_04\. last night i wrote you a letter and it changed the world._

“I’m sorry.” His head is in his hands, his knees are shaking. He’s trying to say all the right things, doesn’t know if he looks as victimized as he feels. Whatever he says, whatever he does or sees or thinks, none of it matters.

Wrinkled around the edge, and crease-folded in half, there’s this little scrap of paper waiting on the table. It’s just half a piece of drafting paper but it’s making Patrick’s stomach churn in every worst way. 

“He’s twenty eight, Patrick!” Someone is yelling above him, swinging their hands in the air for emphasis, for something else Patrick can’t see. “It doesn’t matter that you’re _sorry_ \-- he’s, and you’re...”

“I’m _old enough_ ,” He struggles to say, letting go of his head long enough to look over at his mother, sitting on the edge of the sofa opposite him, running her fingers through her hair repetitively. Obsessively.

His father is in front of him quick, then, and he’s a gentle man, a quiet man, but his eyes are blazing -- Patrick’s never seen him like this. He lowers his head back to his hands, and can’t help it when his shoulders begin to quake.

“You will never be _old enough_!” His father shouts, bending down to snatch the piece of paper off of the table top.

It’s only been fifteen hours since then. But this is now, Patrick thinks, devastated.

.

_need to get it off my chest - i’ve stopped striking matches because i’m ready to admit it, i’m at a bus stop and it’s raining hard enough to commit me to this idea of perfection: me and you, you mostly (but i’m there too.) hearts are heavy but i’m turning mine into a campfire. so pull up a stump or a lawn chair or something. x._

.

The paper had been wrapped tight around his bus pass, discovered under the overpass three blocks from Pete’s apartment building. Patrick had wrapped his fingers around the edges of the paper and sure-smiled, huddling against the overpass wall when a semi-truck rumbled past him.

The gust of wind following the truck hadn’t been enough to steal the note from Patrick’s grip, because Patrick was putting up a fight, now -- ready to take on the world.

Smiling up at the overcast sky with his palm pressed against the note in his jacket pocket, Patrick wondered if, with all of this newfound knowledge, anything could really be that hard from here on out.

 

.

 

_05\. wake up kids, we got the dreamer’s disease._

_earlier that morning._

“He totally wants in her pants.”

Pete slides his board back and forth against the warm curve of the sidewalk, torso bent at an uncomfortable ache, eyes slanted because of the sun. He accidentally runs over his thumb and cringes. The skin underneath his nail aches. “She’s like the only chick skateboarder I know.”

“Yeah but you don’t _know_ her.” Patrick looks to the side and adjusts the front of his hat with both hands, fingers working over the sun stained fabric.

“I went to like, third grade with her,” Pete shrugs, before hissing when he hears a particularly rough sounding skid echo out of the dry pool in the next lot. He hears no follow up groan, but glances over his shoulder once anyways before rubbing away the bit of sleep left in the corner of his eye. “I don’t think she’s that hot.” 

Patrick frowns into the sun shining right in his face. “Me neither. She’s kind of a bitch.”

“Hmm,” Pete nods, uncommitted, before unfolding himself from the sun warmed pile of limbs that he once was against the sidewalk. 

He stands up and offers a hand to Patrick, still spread over the ground.

.

_the middle of that afternoon._

They’re listening to Eazy E and the couch smells like sunburns and cigarettes. Pete’s backyard is crowded with people Patrick has known since he was five years old, they’re standing around with dentist-loving smiles and alcohol necks in their hands, and Patrick thinks as the sun sets over the crooked fence, this is how it should be forever.

“Max -- you know, dance dance Max,” Pete says, balancing the diet coke on the dry grass below them as he flings one arm over the side of the trashed backyard couch. “Friend or enemy?”

Patrick frowns, one of his knees bent into the back couch cushion. “Frienemy. What’s the point of this game again?”

“The point is, there is no point,” Pete emphasizes, adjusting his position again. He wiggles around on the couch until both of his knees are pulled up to his chin and Patrick can see the scar across his lower calf he got last year on some half pipe in Montana.

Leaning back against the couch, Patrick watches the summer bodies dance around Pete’s yard and lets his palm grow wet with beer bottle condensation.

.

_later that night._

Loud laughter and kerosene fills up the huge metal tub Pete found underneath his mother’s porch earlier in the season, and Patrick stands to the side with a smile on his face and his arms over his chest, watching.

“You’re going to make something _explode_ ,” Julie -- earlier that day Julie -- giggles, holding onto the arm of Mark -- totally wants in her pants Mark. 

Pete ‘pffts’ and reaches into his back pocket for the matches. Patrick grins, amused.

“It might,” He comments, taking a step closer to look down into the pit of garbage, old ash, and marshmallow ghosts. 

“Then I guess we’ll just have to go down in flames together,” Pete comments, tearing a match from the book and striking. Patrick raises his eyebrows and watches as Pete flicks it into the garbage bin.

Patrick’s face warms as fire swallows the inside of the bin and swells until flames spill over the sides.

“I told you,” Pete says, even though he takes a step back. “It would be fine.”

 

.

 

_06\. and I worry, I worry, oh my god I felt my heart stop. I felt my fucking heart stop. But we’re going all the way, I only have myself to blame -- oh they know, they know, they know their eyes are tearing the skin from our bodies and dressing us in guilt._

(Midnight)

“Quiet,” Pete’s whispering, bent down low beside Patrick’s single-sized bed. “You want us to get caught?”

Patrick, startled out of sleep, pushes himself up on one elbow. “What’s going on?”

“I got my cousin’s car.” Pete is making quick work of Patrick’s blankets. “We’re leaving.”

.

 

(Noon)

“Oh yeah? You sure do have room enough for ten rows of teeth, dontcha?” 

Patrick crouches down in the driveway, swirling with loose dust and the smell of car oil, and rests his head in his hands. Heavy footsteps inside the front foyer of the house, Pete’s low voice and his father’s too-heavy drawl.

“Where the fuck do you get off on doing this to him?” Pete’s yelling, probably already shoving with that short fuse of his in one hand. Patrick holds onto the back of his head. His mother’s probably in the sun room doing the same thing he is out here.

“He is _my boy_ \-- you got that?” Patrick’s father shouts, Pete laughs. “So don’t _you_ run your mouth at me, understood?”

Their voices are getting clearer as they near the front of the house. It started in the kitchen, Patrick will never look at a bottle of milk the same way again.

“Oh, I fuckin’ _got_ it,” Pete snaps, a melting pot of fury. “I fuckin’ _got_ how he’s been living at my place the last -- what, six months? How long’s it been, Frank? Cause it seems like a _long while_ to me.”

“His mama knew the whole time -- “

Patrick can see Pete in the hallway, now, the back of his torso and the flesh of his nape.

“His mama knew what? His mama knew he was getting fucked every night by another _man_?” Pete is taunting, walking backwards because he knows better than to turn his back on an angry father. “Did his mama know _that_?”

Suddenly the front screen door is slamming hard back against the frame, and Pete’s tight angry body is rushing down the front wooden steps. Patrick stands up quick, knees tense and shoulders rigid.

“You get the fuck off my property!” Patrick’s father is at the front door in a flash, yelling out from behind the mosquito netting in the front frame. “I don’t want to see you around here no more!”

Pete throws something against the dirt ground. A cloud of dust fumes up, caking into the cuffs of his already stubborn-dirty pants. Patrick looks between the front door, and the angry line of Pete’s back, feeling utterly defenseless.

.

(11:54 am)

“Patrick, mail’s here, and you got -- “ His mother freezes in the doorway, the short stack of envelopes in her hand frozen nearest the light switch.

Hands flying to cover his eyes against the sudden flood of bright, Patrick hears Pete roll off the bed and land on the floor, hard.

“Oh,” His mother whispers. “Oh.”

The sound of his father’s footsteps moving down the hall thump like adrenaline heartbeats in Patrick’s throat.

.

(3:37 am)

“I really ought to get going,” Pete is whispering against Patrick’s mouth, eyes closed and heavy-tired. “Sun’s gonna come up.”

Patrick shakes his head and tugs Pete back, away from the window.

“Nah,” He murmurs, still panting from before. “Not yet.”

Pete grins, teeth pressed against the front of Patrick’s mouth. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

 

.

 

_07\. “i love you” spills like vomit from her lips._

“I’m sorry,” Patrick is whispering, over and over, a quiet hush that sticks to the inside of Pete’s skull like a warming leech. She’s across the room sobbing, barely dressed, a desperate mess. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Pete shakes his head, this slow steady shake that has Patrick’s stomach upside down.

“Fuck you,” He mumbles, using his thumb to wipe the inside corner of his eye. “Fuck you both.”

She’s trying to crawl back across the bed as Patrick does his pants up, fingers trembling.

“I love you, I love you,” She sobs, hiccupping, deer-legs shaking as she slides off the side of the bed. “Don’t go, Pete, Pete, I love you.”

Patrick’s insides chill when Pete slips out the bedroom door, quietly.

.

“She fucked him,” He murmurs into his glass later that night, the dim interior of the bar shading his face in the most odd of ways.

Joe’s sitting beside him, mouth open, staring at the top of the counter like a cold dead fish.

“That’s so fucked up,” He finally settles on, shaking his head, sucking off the front of his teeth. His mouth tastes like dull enamel. Pete just tastes dull, like cottony dust. “What did Patrick say?”

“That he was sorry,” Pete laughs into his glass, tossing the shot back. He cringes. He isn’t a drinker, but tonight’s the night. He half turns to Joe and scoffs. “That he’s _sorry_. Fuck that. Fuck him. And fuck her too.”

.

Patrick thinks about sleeping on Pete’s doorstep that night, but settles for the living room couch instead. 

.

“You know I am,” He whispers the next morning, when Pete turns up in the kitchen over a bowl of sugar sweet cereal. Neither of them slept much, they look about as bad as each other. Patrick feels worse. “Pete.”

Pete grimaces into his pink tinted cereal. “No.” He shakes his head. “Not yet.”

Falling silent, Patrick stands in the middle of the kitchen, and tries not to say another word.

 

.

 

_08\. this city has never seen anyone else like us before._

They’re roommates first (“you dick, you ate my wheat thins -- buy me more”), buddies second (“dude you’ve totally got something gnarly on your... no, left, left, right, up... yeah... get the fuck away! Pete, _gross_!”) and what Patrick hesitantly calls ‘boyfriends’ third (“I’m not kissing you with that nutella shit in your mouth.”)

“I definitely lost my fuckin’...” Pete trails off and steps away from his mattress, scratching the back of his head. “Fuck.”

Patrick’s only half way committed to the conversation, mostly involved in his psych text on the other side of the room, pencil stuck behind one ear, lobe twisted between his fingers -- nervous habit.

“Huh?” He asks a diagram of Freud, and he was a pretty neat guy, Patrick thinks.

“Fuck.” Pete is back to rooting around in the pile of crap stacked precariously high on his desk. “I lost my damn notes for... is that... no, damn. Damn!”

“Huh,” Patrick says again, nodding, completely unaware that they’re in the middle of two distinctly different conversations with each other.

Pete kneels down to dig around in the garbage can underneath the desk. Patrick flips the page, and tugs the pencil from behind his ear. One of these days he plans on upgrading to a highlighter. 

 

.

 

_09\. this is your desperate attempt at keeping promises._

“I’ll do it.” He’s talking around the cigarette in his mouth and his heart on his sleeve, toes flush against the ledge of the building, arms out to steady. Ready? “I’ll bet you the afterlife that I won’t feel a thing.”

Pete’s spread out over the loose gravel cover of the roof floor, just watching the jet stream clouds float by overhead with his conscience loose and elbows relaxed.

“If you bet me my afterlife, I wouldn’t be able to meet up with you and discuss your guts on the sidewalk from here to the next block over.” Pete scratches at the back curve of his hand, and glances over at Patrick, still walking along the outer rail of the roof. “So, no. All bets are off.”

“You ruin everything for me,” Patrick says, tongue in cheek, half-disregarded smile on his face as he turns, not carefully enough, and walks back the way he started. Pete watches his feet on the cracked concrete uncomfortably, feeling odd, like he should say something, or change the -- 

His foot slips, and Pete’s up off the floor in a flash, but it isn’t soon enough. Patrick disappears over the side of the building, and Pete can’t pick his combusted heart up off the floor fast enough to make it in time.

 

.

 

_10\. don’t think we won’t get to the bottom of this._

“I’m -- “ 

Patrick’s grin stops him mid-word, a shake of the hand and Pete’s palm is clammy.

“I know who you are.” Patrick takes a step back, eyes the endless looping of audio wire hanging around them, technicians running like they have a cause. He grins again, catches Pete off-guard and tucks his hands in his pockets.

Pete swallows the guilt (this kid is only 17, maybe 18) in his throat just long enough...

“So. You coming to the show tonight?”

A microphone squeals loud on centre stage, Patrick doesn’t flinch.

“If you’re lucky,” He says, turning to walk away.

Pete smirks, and lets him.


End file.
